Dr Ayoubi is Associate Professor-Curriculum Lead for Strategy Subject Area at School of Strategy and Leadership and Associate Research Member at GLEA Research Centre at Coventry University. He is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE) in UK and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. At academic levels, he held the positions of Quantitative Institutional Researcher at the University of Glamorgan in Wales; Consultant for the UNDP; Visiting Research Fellow in the field of HE Governance at University of Kassel in Germany; Senior Projects and Internationalisation Consultant and PhD supervisor at Cardiff Met University; Assistant and Associate Professor of Strategic Management, Leadership and Organisational Studies for 8 years when he taught courses in Organisation Theory,  Organisational Behaviour, Strategy, Leadership Skills, Business Case Studies, Strategic Marketing, and Managerial Economics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

He received his PhD degree in managing Internationalisation and partnerships of UK universities and MA degree from the University of Nottingham/School of Education and Business School in UK funded jointly by Chevening Scholarships and Fellowships, Nottingham and Damascus Universities. Earlier, he received three degrees; which are Postgraduate Diploma in Business Studies, Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Business and Computing, and Bachelor of Arts in Business. In the latter degree, he was ranked the first graduated student amongst his colleagues.

Dr Ayoubi is the Editor in Chief for Journal of Marketing of Higher Education published by Taylor and Francis and ex-Associate Editor for the same journal; Member of the editorial board of International Journal of Educational Management published by Emerald; and Arab Economics and Business Journal published by Elsevier. He contributed as author and reviewer to several international academic journals published by Emerald, Taylor & Francis and others. He has written more than 50 academic articles, conference papers and country reports in the field of HE management, marketing, internationalisation and leadership. His work was mainly published in Studies in Higher Education Journal, Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, Strategic Marketing Journal, European Journal of Higher Education, Employee Relations Journal, International Journal of Educational Management, Personnel Review, Education and Training Journal, International Higher Education Journal, Journal of Management Development, Leadership and Organisation Development Journal, International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Journal of Studies in International Education, Public Organisation Review, Euromed Journal of Business, Journal of Further and Higher Education, International Journal of Management Education, Interntional Journal of Public Administration, Handbook of Internationalisation of Higher Education, and University World News.

Before joining Coventry University as Associate Professor in Business Strategy,  from 2007 until early 2016, Dr Ayoubi was the director, coordinator and senior focal point of Tempus, Erasmus Mundus and Erasmus+ Programmes, and European HE programmes in Syria (with a total value of over 15 million euros for Syria). Managing a team of 5 support staff and 5 HE reform experts; following up the implementation of more than 40 Tempus and Erasmus+ partnerships’ projects aiming at developing educational capacity, and involved in monitoring for and reporting to the European Commission, European Delegation and Minister of HE; and successfully developed huge networks in the international market, including mainly Europe and the MENA regions. In his previous work at Cardiff Met University, he was involved in preparing several policy reports, studies and reviews that support the internationalisation strategy of the university, including mainly leading a Badge of Comprehensive Internationalisation for Cardiff Metropolitan University offered by International Association of Universities to be the first university awarded this badge. In addition, he was the core leading person for writing international projects’ proposals for the international and partnerships office. He, with a team of four people, targeted funds from Erasmus+ Key Action 1+2 (mainly CBHE Projects), British Council, SPHEIR Programme, Higher Education Leadership Foundation, and UKCISA Grants Scheme.

Furthermore, he has three PhDs and five MPhil completions. He also supervised the work of three post doctorate researchers in the field of higher education management. Dr Ayoubi acts as internal and external examiner for several PhD/MPhil theses in UK and internationally.

He was an expert for several HE funded projects from the EU and other funding bodies, such as, Establishing an Internationalisation of HE Network for the MENA Region; Internationalisation of HE regional meetings for the Netherlands Institutes in the Middle East; Middle East Research and Innovation Dialogue (MERID), and Science4Refugees, Scholarship Programmes to support Palestinian Refugee access to higher education in Lebanon.

Prior to the political unrest in Syria, Dr Ayoubi was national counterpart for Fact Finding Mission of Said Business School at Oxford University to Syria for a Leadership programme, and supervisor for 10 VIPs candidates from public, private and NGO sectors; Team member for the Fact Finding Mission of DAAD to Syria to develop a Centre of Research in HE; and National counterpart for MTEF, team member for Quality Assurance, information systems and Steering Committee member for an EU funded project for upgrading the HE system in Syria, Ministry of HE (value of 10 million Euros).

He act as contributor to the political dialogue in HE with the EC for the MENA, and was involved in several missions for upgrading the HE system in Syria supported by the EU, UNDP and others. His methods of managing strategic cooperation and partnerships in the HE sector developed in his PhD thesis was published in a book called «Strategic Management and Globalization: The M4O and 5S Methods and International Partnerships in Universities».

In October 2015 he was ranked third in Syria in English publications in business and managemen indexed in Scopus, according to the Erasmus+ Report of indexing international Syrian researchers. In July 2018, he received Cardiff Metropolitan University Vice Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Global Diplomacy and Engagement.

Dr Ayoubi main research interests is higher education management including mainly:

Strategy and management of internationalisation;leadership; strategic management in the sector; youth issues in the sector; HE in conflict zones, management and marketing of HE; CRM strategy and IS in HE; labour market and employability of graduates; HRM in HE and modelling and system thinking in HE sector, global governance, diplomacy and social responsibility of the HE sector.

• Ms Lamiaa Hassan, Thesis title: An investigation of the academic advising process in Egyptian HE Sector: A comprehensive case study approach (PhD, Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK, 2018), completed.
• Ms Nourhan Hamdi, Thesis title: Social networking sites in HE: A communities of inquiry-based study (PhD, Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK, 2019), completed.
• Mr Alex Addae Korankey, Thesis title: A comprehensive framework to investigate the phenomenon of Microfinance in Ghana (PhD, Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK, 2020), completed.